(Pictures from top to bottom, left to right. Yen and Alisha, Yvonne and Saanvi, Kenneth and Yushun, Jimmy, Jack El and Mireya and Keira, Chiew Hui and Melanie.)

Today we planned to make necklaces. We had an idea document that the clients based their necklaces on. We also had other activities for the clients to do such as playing with a ball, making a design out of the heat beads, playing with the bowling pins, and stacking some blocks. The necklace activity was very successful as most clients were very excited, although, some clients got bored or finished their necklaces very quickly so they moved on to either throwing around balls, kicking down bowling pins, throwing the ball at bowling pins, or playing with stacking blocks. Some of the challenges we faced were we had trouble communicating with them as many of them either don’t speak at all (or speak very rarely) or they speak a different language. One example of this is Melanie and Chiew Hui (Pictured in the featured photo). Chiew Hui very rarely speaks but understands Mandarin, Melanie found a way of communicating to Chiew Hui by speaking in Mandarin to her which gave the two somewhat of a bond or in Melanie’s words “a better level of understanding”. This shows that just because it’s hard to communicate doesn’t mean its impossible and we can always figure out a means of communicating with our clients.